Stronger Than Death Read online

  The water was lapping up round my ankles by the time she reached the first stance and tied on. I followed her up. A climb, any climb, is easier on second. Courage comes easy with a rope above you and a belay you trust. On this pitch, I can say with absolute certainty that I would never have got up it without her there to hold me. The crack was easily as bad as it looked from the floor. Every hold felt like smearing up on butter. I slipped once, about fifteen feet up, lost the traction on one foot and then a shoulder and snapped out sideways to hang, spinning, in the mouth of the crack. Getting back on the rock was harder than you’d imagine with nothing to hold on to that wasn’t covered in stinking, rotten seaweed. I did the rest of it on a back-wash of bilious adrenaline and came out to stand beside her dripping with sweat and algal scum and smelling of stagnant fish.

  I stepped round behind her and clipped in on the blue. ‘Thanks for the lift.’

  ‘You’re welcome. Sorry you got your feet wet.’

  ‘No problem.’ We never talk sense on the first bit of a climb.

  She passed me a couple of large-sized friends from her rack. ‘You OK to go on up?’

  ‘Sure.’ All things are relative.

  The next pitch looked better. The rock wasn’t dry but it was wet only from the spray of the waves below. The barnacle-stance was long since invisible, swamped by the incoming tide.

  I went up on two ropes: red to the right, blue to the left. The rock leant out slightly, which made it hard on the arms, but the holds were positive and the crack took most of the protection. I reached the second stance around the time the boulder protecting the shelf finally succumbed to the water. I tied in on blue, fixed a krab for her on red and took in as she followed me up. She paused as she reached me but she didn’t clip in. There was no need. I handed her the rest of the rack and then stood there paying out the twin coils of our umbilicus as she moved on up the third pitch. She smiled, I think, in passing, but she was back in her own world by then; smooth and flowing, balanced between fingers and toes, a martial artist dancing with the line of the rock.

  The sun moved round on to the cliff as she climbed. Runnels of spray dried to white salt on the cliff-face in front of me and the rock warmed under my feet. The breeze backed round with the change in temperature and blew off the old-weed stench of the crack so that I could smell clean sea again with lines through it of bracken and spruce from the Forestry land up on top of the peninsula. Very peaceful. Even the sea, free from the echo-chamber of the crack, was at peace, turned down to a quiet background hush, like a radio not quite tuned, with the gulls and the wind and the odd sighing grunt from Lee weaving counterpoints over the top.

  I leant back in the harness and looked round. Over my right shoulder, Gigha lay low in the surf. Behind me, the mountains of Islay and the twin Paps of Jura hauled up out of the sea, solid, enduring and steadfast. Down in the Sound, the water shifted from grey to green to aquamarine, curled into eddies by currents you couldn’t begin to map. Sunlight caught on the surface, spinning mirrors of salt and water, breaking them and making them whole again with no bad luck in between. Life in reflection.

  Lee finished the third pitch. A gull challenged her for ownership of the ledge at the top. I saw her talk with it for a while, the way I talk with the dog, and then she moved back and off to the right and set up a hanging belay out of range of the nest scrape. When I got there, she was still negotiating, looping the ropes over a separate sling out to one side so that they didn’t impinge on territory that wasn’t hers. ‘He was here before us,’ she said simply. And then, without changing tone: ‘I think the fourth is the crux.’

  Really? I very much doubt it. Nothing on earth could possibly be as bad as that traverse. But then she’s not at war with the water.

  I kept my eyes on the rock. ‘Are you sure?’

  She shrugged. ‘See what you think.’

  I gave myself eight more feet of rope on the belay and stood up on the ledge. The gull mewed and draped spread wings over its scrape, weaving its head in snake-patterns of threat. I shuffled a foot or two to the right and it settled back, bright-eyed and wary. I breathed deep with closed eyes and then stepped up on a pebble and reached for the obvious crack as it crossed above my head. My fingers slid over the lip into cool, solid darkness. The edges were sharp. I like climbing on sharp rock.

  I stepped back on to the ledge. The gull hissed. Lee lifted one brow. I smiled and the world was at peace. ‘I’ll need all of the friends,’ I said.

  I was climbing then as well as I have ever climbed. The angled section of the crack was like walking up stairs—endless protection and good, solid holds. Disappointingly easy. You don’t want anything to be too easy on a first ascent, you want it to be as difficult as possible without being fatal. That way lies fame and long life. Unless you peel off halfway up. That way lies a bed in the spinal wards and a long time wondering why.

  Don’t think about that.

  The vertical section was less of a cruise, long and narrow and not quite the right width to hold hands or feet without them slipping. I jammed on up anyway, leaning out on clenched fists, working my feet into the back of the crack, bracing against anything that would hold. The skin shredded on the backs of both hands. Good climbers don’t have scars. I have lots. I am not a good climber. This is not a good time to remember that, or to imagine what will happen if both hands slip out while a foot is jammed in the crack. Keep moving. Don’t look down.

  A small horizontal break, twenty feet up from the last hex, took a No. 6 nut, the kind of size I might be prepared to trust my life to. Ten feet above that, I felt a twitch in the rope and a hiss from the gull. Or maybe not the gull. I looked down. A long, long way down, the Atlantic flashed mirrors. Somewhere between me and it, a small piece of grit-worn steel spiralled down the rope like a single dandelion seed blown from a clock.

  ‘Protection’s out.’ Her voice was more level than mine would have been.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You could do with some more.’

  ‘Yup.’

  Later. I can’t stop now. Later.

  I moved on up.

  The crack ran out sooner than I’d expected. Something changed in the contour of the rock and the right-hand wall stood eight inches proud of the left. You can’t jam on that. I stood on a ledge no wider than the rope and I ran my fingers blindly over blind rock, searching for something to hold.

  ‘I think it’s a layback.’

  No. I don’t think so. I’m not laying anything back. Not on lead. Not forty feet over the last bit of decent protection. That’s an eighty-foot fall. More if the friend rips out. I stood under a crag once and saw Bobby Renton fall two hundred feet down the line of a crack. Every one of his friends popped out as he fell—a long rippling crackle, like fast-opened press-studs. He landed at my feet and snapped both of his femurs. It could have been so much worse.

  My right foot began to tremble—a spastic St Vitus dance of lactic acid and fear. Mostly fear. It comes when you stand too long on something too small and contemplate the frailty of flesh and the fragility of bone. For me, it comes when I start to see phantom X-rays with my name on the label and shattered fragments of bone scattered over the film: a spiralling, self-perpetuating, self-fulfilling prophecy. Every climber in the world knows that when the shaking starts, it’s only a matter of time before you fall off. Unless you can find a way to go up.

  I laid it back, hooked both hands over the rim of the crack, leant back on stretched arms, lifted a foot and braced it on the far wall, lifted the other to join it, then shuffled up crab-wise on arms that burned and legs that cramped and a mind that went into white-out.

  The fourth is the crux.

  How do you know?

  Because I spent half of the winter hanging off an abseil rope working out the moves.

  Why didn’t you tell me?

  I tried.

  You don’t want anything to be too easy … you want it to be as difficult as possible without being fatal … unless you peel of
f halfway up. That way lies a bed in the spinal wards and a long time wondering why.

  I could peel off any moment now.

  This is impossible. Madness. Insanity.

  The crack ran out for real. It narrowed to the width of two fingers and then simply stopped. Somewhere, three feet below that, the gods left a break: two inches of horizontal rock where everything else followed gravity into the sea. I got a foot on it and stood up; my other foot was wedged at an angle in the depths of the crack. I jammed my right hand into the top end of the main crack, clenched hard and lost more skin to the famished rock. Fresh blood slid between skin and stone. Good lubrication. Bad friction. It’ll do.

  I leant in with my face flat to the rock and breathed in the fresh breath of the sea.

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘I’m alive.’

  ‘You need to step up for the ledge from there.’

  ‘Is it worth going for?’

  ‘Like a playing field. Eric found a sheep on it last time we came down.’

  ‘A live one?’

  ‘Yup. There’s a track from the far edge that goes up to the top. You can walk off from there if you want.’

  Thanks.

  I kept my cheek on the rock and turned my head up to look. The black line of the ledge stood out charcoal against the blue of the sky. Thin spikes of grass waved outwards, billowing on the rising thermals. Forget the sheep. If there’s grass, then it’s a good ledge. That way lies safety.

  I reached up. Nowhere near. I stood on tiptoe and then on one foot on tiptoe and was still nowhere near. I spread my hands, one at a time, across featureless rock searching for holds and found none. I went back to my crack.

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Lousy.’

  Some folk climb because it gives their life meaning. The rest of us climb for the buzz and the adrenaline rush at the top. We are the ones who know when to stop. This is what sets us apart from the rest. This is what keeps us alive. Whatever it was I was trying to prove, I have proved it. Or I will never prove it. I have had enough of this. There is always down.

  I said it out loud, pushing my voice down the ropes. ‘Lee, I can’t do this. I’m coming down.’

  Silence.

  ‘Did you hear me?’

  ‘I heard.’ She sounded uncannily calm. ‘Do you think you can lay back down the crack?’

  Are you mad? No one does laybacks downwards. Not without a seriously well-developed deathwish. I didn’t bother to look down. ‘Fuck off, Adams.’

  ‘So then can you put in some decent protection and I’ll lower you off?’

  More silence.

  ‘Kellen, did you hear me?’

  ‘I heard.’

  There is no protection up here. But then she knows that.

  The fourth is the crux.

  Fuck it. I hate this. When we get back to safe ground, remind me that I hate this.

  I found a hold, small and insecure, more like a one-finger jamming crack, a long way off to the left. With a bit of persuasion, it took my tiny half-sized friend. My talisman. I didn’t test it. I clipped a long sling on the end, then eased the left-hand rope up and clipped it, one-handed, to the sling.

  ‘Clipping in on red.’

  ‘Fine. I’ve got you. You OK up there?’

  ‘Don’t ask.’

  I turned back to face the rock and breathed in the sea and the sweat and the earth-hard smell of stone. Cramp knifed in waves through the arch of my right foot. I eased it in the rock. It slipped.

  Oh, Mother, I hate this.

  ‘Lee, take tight … I’m falling.’

  I fell. On to a 5-mm friend. It held. Hard rock scraped holes in the side of my T-shirt as I slid sideways across the face. The red rope ran in a single, thrumming life-line from her belt up to the sling and down to my belt. I swung out and back in a pendulum arc and slowed to a stop in the middle.

  I turned into the rock and clawed back to my toehold. Breathing was harder than I remembered.

  ‘Do you want me to lower you off that friend?’

  ‘No.’ It has held this long. I don’t want to push it further. ‘I’ll find another.’

  ‘If you like.’ I could hear the shrug in her voice. The lift to the tone that said there isn’t one to find.

  I hate this. Please God never let me forget how much I hate this.

  ‘Kellen, is there not a pebble up there on the right near where that pale patch of rock starts?’

  ‘No.’ There’s nothing up there. We both know that.

  I tried for it anyway. Rough rock sandpapered the ends of my fingers.

  ‘Further up … and right a bit …’

  ‘Shit … yes …’ There was a pebble. The kind of tiny, jammed-in pebble that the weather leaves behind for desperate climbers. It was there, poking out of the rock, about the size of my thumbnail, not huge, but big enough to make the difference. Big enough to hold on to while I moved my feet up and out of that bloody crack. Big enough to push up from and reach the ledge, solid and positive and there’s no way I’m going to slip off this one. I pulled up in one big, joint-wrenching pull.

  Safe.

  ‘Hey, you made it.’

  So I did. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘How’s the sheep?’ Her voice ran up the rope, alive and buoyant.

  ‘How the hell should I know? Just let me fix a belay and then …’ And then any sheep that there was could have taken wings and flown and I wouldn’t have noticed it. Because Eric was there, Eric Dalziel, lying in the sunlight with one arm tucked under his head, grinning his big-bear grin as if he was waiting for me and I was late. Four hundred feet off the ground on a climb no one was supposed to have done before.

  ‘Lee … Lee. Eric’s up here.’

  ‘What?’ Rope rippled live through the dead of my fingers. ‘He can’t be. This one’s ours.’ Her voice climbed ahead of her. Still buoyant. She could have been standing beside us. ‘Hey, Eric, you bastard, what are you doing on our climb?’

  No. It isn’t like that. You don’t understand. ‘Lee. Stop pissing about. Just get up here, can you?’

  We’ve climbed together long enough. The laughter stopped. I felt her testing the placements around her and then take them out as I fixed in the belay. She tugged on the ropes. ‘Coming up.’

  I sat with my legs dangling over the edge and coiled the ropes as she climbed. Red coiled on blue coiled on red. A spaghetti coil of colours. I took them in so much faster than she had paid out. You can climb anything with a rope above you.

  Time moved as she climbed. The sun swung round the face of the cliff, warming the air, raising the cloud layer, shortening the shadows. There was a sheep, a small, wiry, brown-fleeced sheep with tight-spiralled horns and a pair of fire-ember eyes; hot gold with long vertical slits that narrowed to knife edges in the full face of the sun. It twitched its cleft rabbit’s lip and blethered wetly at the man and the man grinned back and it was clear they’d had plenty of time to get acquainted. The sheep considered conversation with me and thought better of it. It strolled instead along the ledge to a broader spot and lay down, inches from the edge, to ruminate. A sheep without vertigo. I checked the fastenings on my belt one more time and stared straight out into space.

  The breeze gathered pace, carrying wisps of cloud and shadows with them so that the day became parti-coloured. The sheep belched methane spiked with the acid-sharp undercurrents of fermenting grass, and the smell of it covered the other smells of the ledge. A pair of hooded crows appeared from nowhere, riding the thermals. They rose with Lee as she climbed, then banked out sharply, one to either side, and vanished into the open sky as she topped out. She didn’t use my pebble at all, but found other hand-holds in the unblemished rock and stepped up as if it was an over-graded Severe. I thought we’d found ourselves a new E3, E2 at the very least. It dropped grades with every move she made.

  She saw him at much the same time I did—just in that moment when the pitch is done and you can take your mind away from the rock to whatever’
s around. I handed her the krab as she came up over the edge and she clipped in but she did it blindly and she didn’t move. She didn’t go to him. She crouched, unmoving, two inches from the edge of a four-hundred-foot drop and stared past me to the man beyond. The man who was lying at all the wrong angles against the rising wall of rock, waiting for something that was never going to happen, grinning to himself and the gods and the open sky at the immense, ridiculous irony of it.

  ‘Eric?’ She said it softly. A half-question. The way you would wake a friend in the morning, or offer a fresh mug of coffee. He gazed back as he had gazed at me for the eternal half-hour of her climb; a fixed-wide stare, seeing nothing. The breeze shifted round to the side and the smell of him flooded the fresh, barnyard smells of the sheep. He was not newly dead.

  ‘Eric?’ One more time, to wake him up. She’s a pathologist. She’s used to death—just not this one. She moved forward eventually and slipped her hand in his. One small, living hand lost in the bear-paw grip of the dead. She was shaking all over, a fine, vibrating tremor that rippled through her to him. His hand shuddered gently but not the rest of him. He was too big to shake much. Too solid, too long dead.

  ‘My phone’s in your pack. The flare’s in mine. We can finish the route if you think it’ll go. Otherwise, we’ll have to follow the sheep path off and up to the top.’ I have had half an hour to think about this. Thirty minutes of colour-coiled spaghetti to think the unthinkable. ‘One way or another, we need to call the Rescue and get a team in here to get him off.’ And we need to get him to a hospital where someone will have to do a post-mortem. She has a promise on that. I heard her make it. I never thought she’d be called on to honour it.